Saturday, June 28, 2014

Poem of the Day: "Ode on Intimations of Immortality, Part VIII" by William Wordsworth, Poet of the Month

For the Songs of Eretz Poem of the Day for June 27, 2014 (with apologies for the tardy posting), we will continue with our study of "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" by William Wordsworth, Poet of the Month. Today we examine Part VIII.

Ode on Intimations of Immortality, Part VIII

William Wordsworth

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy soul’s
immensity;

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind,--

Mighty
Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom
those truths rest

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

To whom the
grave

Is but a lonely bed, without the sense of sight

Of day or the warm light,

A place of thoughts where we in waiting lie;

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight

Heavy as frost, and
deep almost as life!In Part VIII, Wordsworth again exhorts his readers to guard against losing one's "inner child." However, it is not until line eighteen of this twenty-five-line poem that we find out that the "thou" of the previous seventeen lines is a child. Wordsworth does this deliberately, forcing the reader to wonder just who this amazing "thou" could be--although, by this, Part VIII, the revelation should really come as no surprise.

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